It almost seemed to me that we were handing them the programs before we listened to their problem. Despite what we might think about how similar everybody is, nobody sees themselves as like anybody else, so good clinical judgment would tell us that it behooves us to spend a little time to get to know someone, understand their perspective. A really nice example of this in my book was a case conference that I participated in where the therapist was working with a parent who was, as I recall, Puerto Rican, and she was going to sort of a native healer in the community.

This woman's daughter was having temper tantrums, and she [the therapist] was trying to convince her that a timeout program would work, but the mother was told by this native healer that her daughter was possessed by the devil. And my question to the therapist was, "If you thought that your daughter was possessed by the devil, would you put her in timeout?" I think we all agreed that we wouldn't, so whether we agree with the mom or not, it makes sense that we talk to her in a way that she understands and we not try to provide suggestions to her that make no sense from her world view.

An easier example very quickly would be where a parent feels that a child is doing something on purpose, and their attribution for the child's behavior is he can control himself; he's just spoiled. We come across spoiling the child even more. That wouldn't make any sense. We've got to figure out with the parent how you're seeing it, how I'm seeing it, and what makes the most sense. And I don't think that's any different at a community level with an agency or a school. I think we have to think how are they understanding the problems that we're talking about, how do we understand it, and then how do we come together.